Family values come to the rescue of digital media

By - May 9, 2005 By Damien Stolarz for SiliconValleyWatcher

Content-Umpire.jpgHere's an interesting case study in how to get a bill through congress. USA TODAY reported about the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, which delivers stricter penalties for digital media pirates while legitimizing services such as Clearplay that edit out the objectionable parts of a movie.

Here's how it works: You buy a Clearplay DVD player (or run Clearplay DVD software on your computer), and you subscribe to Clearplay's edit list. You aren't actually getting an edited DVD from Clearplay; they're merely instructing your DVD player to bleep, mute, or drop scenes and language you don't want you or your children to hear.


It's quite common to have several related, if contradictory, pieces of legislation on a bill. And this bill, as the San Francisco Chronicle noted, was a mixed bag for the MPAA. While it made it a federal crime to record a movie with a camcorder (yikes!), the bill has made Clearplay almost impervious to the lawsuits against it from eight studios and the Directors Guild of America.

In my own pragmatist view of politics, the use of conservative allies to support liberal causes is an brilliant and vastly untapped approach. For instance, late 2002, Jesse Helms saved internet radio (article in Salon.com).

I spoke to Wendy Seltzer of the Electronic Frontier Foundation informally at a recent conference and suggested that they should find more creative ways to enlist conservative allies. I hope I'm paraphrasing her correctly, because I loved her response: She said she supports people's right to edit out the parts they find objectionable, and she would similarly support a different service that only showed you all the naughty parts that Clearplay took out.

(Note to self: I wonder if Clearplay has a "scatological humor" filter, and if so, would it delete some of the Jar Jar Binks scenes from my copy of Episode One?)

So, reader, here's your assignment: If you feel like your rights to digital media are being trampled on, figure out how to make this assault on our liberties relevant to a politically influential voting bloc. There's no love lost between conservative pundits and "Hollywood", so instead of invoking abstract copyright arguments, let's hit these unlawful media restrictions below the beltway and get some pro-consumer legislation passed!

Amen.


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By - May 9, 2005 | Permalink | Comment | Category: Digital Video
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Comments (2)

JD Lasica:

One of the chapters in my book, which came out just this week, focuses on services such as Clearplay and Trilogy Studios.

While liberals bemoan any restrictions on speech, there's nothing wrong with the practice when it's done by the consumer, and conservatives are tired of having their values put down by the Hollywood elite.

Both liberals and conservatives who care about how they may use digital technologies might be interested in the issues raised by "Darknet: Hollywood's War Against the Digital Generation."

Posted: May 12, 2005 10:21 PM

Steve Lake:

Readers interested in these points might also be interested in this audio interview with Bill Aho, CEO of ClearPlay:

5-3-05: Bill Aho, CEO, ClearPlay, Inc., talks about his company's DVD filtering technology (Entertainment Technology World #21)

and this video interview with Randal Picker at the University of Chicago Law School:

5-13-05: Randal Picker at University of Chicago Law School talks about ClearPlay, Grokster, the Betamax precedent, TiVO, and other techno-entertainment issues (Entertainment Technology World #22)

http://www.etopiamedia.net/emtnn/pages/ent-emtnn/ent-emtnn22-5551212.html

Posted: May 14, 2005 11:33 PM